The Works of Lucian of Samosata

The text followed in this translation is that of Jacobitz, Teubner, 1901, all deviations from which are noted. In the following list of omissions, italics denote that the piece is marked as spurious both by Dindorf and by Jacobitz. The other omissions are mainly by way of expurgation. In a very few other passages some isolated words and phrases have been excised; but it has not been thought necessary to mark these in the texts by asterisks. Halcyon; Deorum Dialogi, iv, v, ix, x, xvii, xxii, xxiii; Dialogi Marini, xiii; Vera Historia, I. 22, II. 19; Alexander, 41,42; Eunuchus; De Astrologia; Amores; Lucius sive Asinus; Rhetorum Preceptor, 23; Hippias; Adversus Indoctum, 23; Pseudologista; Longaevi; Dialogi Meretricii, v, vi, x; De Syria Dea; Philopatris; Charidemus; Nero; Tragodopodagra; Ocypus; Epigrammata.

Lucian lived from about 125 to about 200 A.D., under the Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius and Lucius Verus, Commodus, and perhaps Pertinax. He was a Syrian, born at Samosata on the Euphrates, of parents to whom it was of importance that he should earn his living without spending much time or money on education. His maternal uncle being a statuary, he was apprenticed to him, having shown an aptitude for modelling in the wax that he surreptitiously scraped from his school writing-tablets. The apprenticeship lasted one day. It is clear that he was impulsive all through life; and when his uncle corrected him with a stick for breaking a piece of marble, he ran off home, disposed already to think he had had enough of statuary. His mother took his part, and he made up his mind by the aid of a vision that came to him the same night. He was allowed to follow his bent and go to Ionia. Great Ionian cities like Smyrna and Ephesus were full of admired sophists or teachers of rhetoric. But it is unlikely that Lucian's means would have enabled him to become the pupil of these. He probably acquired his skill to a great extent by the laborious method, which he ironically deprecates in The Rhetorician's Vade mecum, of studying exhaustively the old Attic orators, poets, and historians.

[About the Author]: Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period). Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration The Dream, he was the son of a lower middle class family from the city of Samosata along the banks of the Euphrates in the remote Roman province of Syria. As a young man, he was apprenticed to his uncle to become a sculptor, but, after a failed attempt at sculpting, he ran away to pursue an education in Ionia. He may have become a travelling lecturer and visited universities throughout the Roman Empire. After acquiring fame and wealth through his teaching, Lucian finally settled down in Athens for a decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as a highly paid government official in Egypt, after which point he disappears from the historical record.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian

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